


Tapping

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: But a kid of two characters is mentioned, Eliot Spencer Whump, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Ghosts, MCD, Most of what Eliot thinks in the first part of this is false, Multi, Not actually a kidfic, OT3, Suicidal Thoughts, not permanent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8310091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Eliot can't remember why he's in the house. He thinks it's for a con, but his memories can play tricks on him and maybe he's losing his mind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynne_monstr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynne_monstr/gifts).



> Technically, this is for a prompt from lynne_monstr: Haunted prompt: Eliot - an odd tapping (22) 
> 
> As is the case with most of my stuff, it did not go to plan. Also, as has been noticed by some of my SPN readers, I have a thing about tea. Well, it's kind of in the name.
> 
> So, yeah, it was meant to be a little ghost ficlet of Eliot being in a house that might be haunted on a con, and instead it became over 11k words of whatever the hell this is. 
> 
> Enjoy?

The house is old. Eliot’s only been in it for a few hours and he already has a list of jobs needing doing, of doors needing rehanging and wiring needing checking out and at least one window needing to be replaced. That’s before he gets to the heating.

He needs to check with Hardison and Sophie about whether his identity would be the type to tackle jobs around the house himself. It’s the kind of call he’d normally make on his own, but his head’s been feeling stuffed the past few days and he knows his thinking isn’t at its sharpest. Hopefully, shuffling about with a cold is something he can work with.

The damn cardigan Sophie’s made him wear isn’t something he’s finding easy to make work, that’s for certain. It’s bulky and knitted and seems to have been made out of nettles, if the weird green color and the scratchiness are anything to go by. It’s adding at least a decade to his age, he’s sure.

Grumbling to himself, he rubs at his head. Tea. He needs something hot and soothing to drink. It’ll help clear his head, and then he can deal with the heating. He’s got time before he needs to do anything more than exist in this house. He thinks. It bothers him he can’t quite remember what he’s meant to do, but that’ll be the cold, too. Tea. Did he already think that? 

The cold has to be to blame for the aches in his joints, too. That, and the years of being thrown about and punched and hit and God knows what else. The damn cardigan’s probably partly at fault, as well, making him feel older than he is. Getting into a head-space can mean slipping in too deep, at times. It’s something Sophie’s talked about with Hardison and with Parker. He’s heard them discussing it. He knows he has.

Can’t think of an exact example just now, the memories hazy and indistinct, but he knows it’s happened. Hot lemon and honey will clear his head. 

Eliot goes to fight with the kitchen. The cupboard doors stick and the stove looks like someone dug it up from its grave. Hardison had better have a reason for sticking Eliot in the worst house he’s been in for years. 

As the water boils, he rubs at his forehead. The dull thud is an irritant he could do without. Whenever he needs to dive into action it’ll be better if he’s clear-headed and not this aching gripe of pain he’s turning into.

The cupboard door sticks and his elbow hurts when he wrenches it open. That elbow’s normally the good one. Still, by the time the steam’s rising from the kettle and he has the mug all ready he’s feeling less irritable. With nothing specific to do on the con just now he can take the time to doctor himself.

A momentary swell of discomfort has him frowning. He can’t quite remember when he is meant to be doing anything, and he knows Hardison will have briefed him. He remembers sitting at the counter, staring up at the screens. He’s done it so often, the single events blur, but they always have a briefing. Even after Sophie and Nate left, they kept up with the briefings, just the three of them.

There’s something wrong about that thought, but he can’t bring that into focus, either.

The kettle sings and he lets himself concentrate on getting the drink made. He’ll be able to focus better once he’s cleared his head a little. He ignores the wisps of white breath that hang in front of him in the air. He just needs to warm up a bit and then he can work out what to do about that heating. 

“Why’d you have to stick me in a dump, Hardison?” he asks. 

He gets no answer. 

Tapping his ear, he feels the bud in place, but no-one talks to him. No Sophie spinning words to calm him down or Nate ordering him to be patient. 

“Typical,” he mutters.

Something must be getting in the way of the damn thing. Hardison needs to sort that out. They can’t afford to be losing contact. Losing contact is what gets them in trouble. What if one of them needs saving and he doesn’t know? Parker could be flinging herself into danger right now.

He pushes down the stab of something heavy and dark at the thought. Parker’s fine. She’s waiting to… She’ll be waiting to do something only Parker would find fun. Still, doesn’t hurt to check in. He’s learned to trust his instincts, with protecting Parker. It would be great, just for a while, to look after someone who would make it easy.

As wisps of steam spiral up from the spout, Eliot reaches into his pocket for his phone. It isn’t there. It’s not like him to lose the thing, not unless he’s in a fight. He hasn’t been in a fight in… It’s been a while. Doesn’t matter he can’t remember the exact length of time. Everything aches anyway. 

The kettle boils before he can leave to search for his phone, and he sets himself to make his drink before he goes looking for it. He’s just got to wait here until the signal. That sounds right. 

He sits at the kitchen table to drink his tea, resting his elbows on the scarred wood. Sophie would have liked this tea. The thought’s distant and he has trouble catching at it. Still, he remembers making her tea. It’s weird how long ago that seems. 

Half of the tea is gone when he hears the tapping. 

One, two, three taps. A pause. One, two, three taps. 

Looking up, Eliot angles his head, triangulating. It’s harder when he’s feeling ill, but he’s good at this kind of thing. He can recognize things the others miss. This could be a bird, maybe, or a branch against a window. It isn’t, though. It’s not the creak of a pipe or the settling of some floorboard he’s mishearing. It’s not anything he can place. 

Sighing, he leaves his tea and stands. Something he can’t recognize means something he can’t factor in, and that means something he can’t protect his team against. A tapping noise might seem like nothing, but he’s used smaller clues before.

A shiver runs through him as he makes his way through the empty hallway and up the stairs. The damn cardigan isn’t enough to keep out the chill, and he’s starting to feel like he’s coming down with a fever. He should find his phone and call Nate, let him know he might need to go off active duty for the rest of this con. 

It’s weird. He can’t remember what Nate’s said about this job, and he normally makes sure to keep an eye on the guy, on his reactions to things, just in case it’s a case of straying too close to the edge. Someone has to stop them all from falling over.

The tapping stops. 

Eliot’s halfway up the stairs and he shakes his head. Quite why he’s on the stairs escapes him. He’s here for a reason. He must be. He can’t quite think what it is, though. Another shiver has him starting up again. He’ll grab something else to wear, or find a blanket to wrap around himself. Then he’ll deal with the heating. It shouldn’t be this cold.

In the bedroom, he only has to look at the bed to realize he’s exhausted. The energy he has drains out of him as he stands in the doorway, and he glances at the clock on the bedside table. It’s only late afternoon, but it’s not like he has anything he needs to do right now. A nap won’t hurt. Might even help him shake this cold so he can be useful when Parker calls the next play. They get less rest now there’s only three of them.

He’s wearing boots. They’re muddy. He doesn’t remember being out in the garden, but he ends up all kinds of places on cons, so maybe he just picked up a pair of boots he hasn’t cleaned for a while. In any case, he unlaces them and pulls them off, leaving them in a pile by the door along with some bags of what looks like old clothing. He really needs to ask Hardison how he got hold of this place.

Without bothering to take off his clothes, he crawls under the covers and curls up, feeling the ache deep in his body now he gives himself time to rest. The pillow’s soft, at least, even if the house is more or less falling apart around him. He really should have done something about that by now. He’s been here for months. 

No. No, he’s been here for hours. On a con. He really is developing a fever if his thoughts are straying. 

But he’s so tired. He lets his eyes slip closed and feels sleep wrap its tendrils around him, pulling him down. He’s almost asleep when he hears the whispering. Voices. One voice. No, voices. Calling his name.

“Eliot? Eliot, can you hear me?”

His eyes blinks open, and the voice is gone. 

He doesn’t understand why his eyes are damp until he works out it was Parker’s voice. And he hasn’t seen Parker in years. He’s summoned her in his dreams, the way he does sometimes, when his mind drifts and he thinks he’s on a con. But it’s been years since he was on any kind of job with his team. It’s been years since he failed them. It’s been years since they died. 

 

***

He doesn’t bother getting back up, not even when night falls. It doesn’t seem worth it. Never does when he remembers. He finds he by far prefers to forget.

***

Fighting sleep never works as well as he wants it to, and he’s half drifting when he hears the sound of a door opening and then footsteps downstairs.

“Uncle El? You up?”

It takes him a minute, a minute he spends scrambling round his own brain, but he dredges up a name. Ben. Not really his nephew, but as close as Eliot has to family. The kid will only traipse upstairs and chatter at Eliot until he gets up. He’s nearly as bad as Hardison that way. 

No. No, not a thought he’s going to let himself have. Hardison and…and all of that part of his life needs to be kept shut away in its box. There’s nothing but pain there. 

Pushing back the covers, he forces himself to his feet and winces at the pain in his knees, in his hips. Ten years and change, and a life that didn’t stop being violent just because his whole reason for using himself up had vanished, that’s what’s done it. Even if he’d stopped fighting the day they were taken from him, he’d still hurt. Too many years of combat and everything that went with it.

Besides, it wasn’t just one day. The memory of those weeks desperately trying to keep any more of them from dying haunts him. He knows the rumors the kids share, out in the neighborhood. Old El’s house is haunted. Yeah. It is. Just not with the kind of ghosts they think.

“Uncle El?”

The stair creaks, and Eliot grimaces as he leaves the room. He catches Ben partway up, his dark hair a scribble across his forehead. He’s looking up at Eliot with that look on his face that says he’s come round to check up, and he’s going to try and con Eliot into thinking it’s not worry, not pity, that has him here.

“You not got anything better to do?” Eliot asks. “Thought your dad had plans for this summer.”

A flash of something crosses Ben’s face, there and gone, and he sketches a tentative smile.

“It’s not summer, Uncle El,” he says. “It’s…it’s almost December. Dad and me, we finished up his garden project already. Don’t you…? Um. We had that get together? Grilled steaks?”

He means Eliot grilled steaks. Fuck. He’s forgotten a whole memory again. It’s been happening more and more. He thinks it has. Kinda hard to say when he spends so much time alone in an empty house with his ghosts. 

“Never mind,” he says. Grunts. He half hears a voice telling him to lighten up and use his words like a normal human. He squashes that, too. “What’re you doing here, boy? You think I can’t take care of myself?” He took care of a whole bunch of people who really did need chasing after. “I’m just fine.”

Ben hesitates. He visibly hesitates. 

“Mom said would you like to come over,” he says. “She’s making this new recipe and she’d like to know if you agree with the seasoning.”

And that’s the thing with Ben: he can always call on his Mom’s friendship with Eliot. Not even with Eliot, though they became friends, back when he was still Eliot Spencer and not the faded thing he’s become. No. Ben’s Mom was friends with Alice White, and much as he tries to keep it all bottled up and tied down, he can’t quite bring himself to cut that last thread. 

He sighs again. It seems all of life is about sighing or scowling these days.

“You tell your Mom she don’t need me and my ideas. She’s the best damn cook in this town.”

She wouldn’t have been, if Eliot had kept up with it, but he lost his appetite for food sometime around the point dark earth fell on Parker’s coffin. It never seemed right, to pin her down that way. 

A wave of dizziness hits him, and he shudders. He shouldn’t let himself think about that. 

“I don’t need babysitting,” he grinds out, trying to keep back the aching emptiness with anger.

Ben presses his lips together. Eliot can almost see the kid trying to plan a new line of attack. He cuts him off before he can begin.

“Look, I don’t need your help. All right? And your Mom doesn’t need mine.” No-one needs Eliot’s help. Not now. “But if it makes her feel better, I’ll let you drag me over there. And then you bring me right back.”

Ben looks relieved. The kid’s cute, but he’d never have made a grifter. Eliot can’t quite understand it. 

In any case, he lets Ben open the front door for him and even manages not to growl when Ben hands him his coat. 

“You think I’m past being able to get my own coat?” he asks, but he has to pause for a moment to remember where his shoes are, and Ben shoots up the stairs when Eliot turns that way, coming back with them much faster than Eliot could manage right now. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

The ride is over quickly, or maybe Eliot just drifted. He does that. He tries to hide it from the few people who still see him, but he knows it happens. He loses whole afternoons sometimes. Legacy of too many hits to the head, he thinks. 

Ben moves to open the door and catches himself in time, disappearing inside the house as Eliot climbs down out of the truck and turns to follow. Ben’s Mom is waiting for him when he reaches it, her smile as deep and real as it always was.

“Eliot,” she says. “Ben told you I need your help?”

“You never needed my help, Peggy,” Eliot says, but he dips as much as he can so she can hug him. She’s about the only physical contact he allows these days. 

“Come on in,” she tells him, and he follows her into a kitchen that’s bright and modern and nothing at all like the rundown thing he’s let fall apart around him back home. “I need to know about this spicing. You’ve got the best palate of anyone I know.”

He manages something like a smile and sits down at the table when she gestures. This will take at least an hour. An hour of tasting food he can’t taste at all and drinking whatever she thinks is good for him and then begging to be allowed to go back. He hates being in that house, but always wants to go back to it when he’s forced out.

Peggy sets a plate of pie in front of him and coffee joins it a moment later. 

“Tell me what you think,” she says, and sits to watch him try it. 

They get into it with the spicing, and Eliot pretends he’s enjoying this. It’s easy enough to drag up old interests for show, but he’s drawing on his grifter training, something he falls into almost without thinking at times. At others, it’s an impossibility to even think about how he used to do that. 

At last, Peggy sits stirring her coffee, a notepad full of ideas by her right hand, and glances at him every now and then.

“Got something on your mind, Peg?” Eliot asks. “Spit it out.”

“It’s nothing,” she says. And frowns. “It’s just… I was reading about a takeover of a restaurant earlier. Up in Portland.”

Ah. Right. That explains why Ben was sent round. 

“Reminded you of me?” 

“Well, yes. But…but it wasn’t just any place. It was…”

She breaks off, pulls a face, and a sliding sense of inevitability washes over Eliot.

“It was the Brewpub,” he says. 

“Yeah. I just…I never really got it. Why you left.”

Why he left his last memories of them to come back to Boston. He almost turns to check for Ben, and Peggy shakes her head. 

“He’ll be out back. You can tell me. If you know.”

If he knows? 

He opens his mouth to answer and the ghost whisper of his name has him closing his eyes. 

“I hear them,” he tells her. “I still hear them, Peggy. It’d be worse if I was back ho- If I was back there.” He picks up his mug, even though he doesn’t want the drink she’s made him. “I’d never get a moment’s peace.”

“And you wouldn’t be able to watch over Ben,” she says. 

“And I wouldn’t have been able to watch over Ben,” Eliot concedes. “Not like he needed it, though.”

“Well, seeing as you moved here so you wouldn’t live with all the memories, do you think you should get out and make new memories some more?”

He doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t push it, but as he’s getting back into the truck to be driven back to his house, she pulls him into a tighter hug. 

“I miss her, too,” she says. “And I have no idea what it’s like for you. But…shutting yourself up can’t be what she’d have wanted. It can’t be what any of them would have wanted.”

But Eliot can’t think about that. He was meant to die to keep them safe, and instead they all died because of him, because he wasn’t there when they needed him.

When Ben gets him back to the house, Eliot watches the kid drive away and tells himself he’s done the job, now. Ben’s grown enough and safe enough. If he ever needed Eliot, he doesn’t need him now. He shuts himself inside the house and contemplates never leaving it again.

***

“Eliot. Eliot, come on. Answer me!”

He jolts awake, chest heaving, and rapidly cooling sweat coating his body. He never dreams of them dying. He’s grateful for whatever part of his brain has edited those memories out of his dreams. The gap in his mind is fine by him. Instead, he sees them alive, or he hears them, calling to him. 

“Shut up, Hardison,” he mutters, and pushes himself upright until he can drop his head into his hands. “Just shut up. Can’t even be quiet when you’re- You can’t ever be quiet, man.”

Hardison should be edging towards middle age by now. He thinks. The sharp edges of the time his team lost cut at Eliot when he looks at them, so he chooses not to look. Tries, anyway. 

It’s barely dawn, but he won’t sleep again. The floorboards are cold under his feet as he makes his way down the stairs and to the kitchen. Shadows coat the surfaces and everything looks larger than it should. He should make tea or grab a glass of water, but he makes his way to the cabinet in the far corner and pulls out a bottle he keeps saying will be his last. 

Nate might have something to say about this, but Nate shouldn’t be saying anything, so Eliot ignores him. 

“Eliot, you just have to-”

He slams the glass back and lets the liquid burn down his throat. It shuts off the voices. Not much does.

Peggy once suggested he see someone about it. The trauma. He knows he’s got PTSD, but that’s not new. He’s had that for years. It didn’t used to take quite this form, though. He nodded and told her he’d think about it and avoided talking to her until she dropped it. At the time, he only intended to stick around until he knew Ben was okay. 

His tea’s nearly cold when he takes another sip. 

Wait. Tea? 

He peers down at his drink and it’s a glass of bourbon. His mind’s so messed up he can’t even tell what he’s drinking. Maybe it really is time he ends this. Not like it’s the first time he’s thought about it. Not like he’d have to pull the trigger himself. Even after all this time, there’s plenty of people who’ll happily end Eliot Spencer.

Still, something holds him back. At first he told himself it was keeping Ben safe, checking to make sure no-one knew he was anything but Peggy’s natural son. Later, he admitted it had something to do with the look on Parker’s face if he did it, the way her eyes would go. Or maybe Sophie’s disappointed ‘Eliot’. In any case, he’s still here, and he still has another drink instead of getting up to pack what he’d need to vanish and find a way to bleed out. 

With the drink drowning their voices, he can sit in silence and accept that he’s stuck in this life without his family. 

“I looked over him for you, Sophie,” he tells the air. “Nate. You gotta let me quit sometime. I can’t… I don’t want to keep doing this.”

They don’t answer.

***

He wakes in his bed, bolting half upright before he remembers where he is. It’s been a long time since anyone attacked him, but that doesn’t settle him much. Too many years where paranoia kept him alive have seeped right into his bones. 

It’s almost ten, and he doesn’t know how he’s slept this late. Then again, he doesn’t remember coming up to bed at all. His head’s pounding. 

The voices start as soon as he sets his feet on the floor. Parker, this time. 

“Eliot. Why won’t you listen?”

“I am listening, Parker,” he tells her. 

“Then come back to us!”

He stops at the top of the stairs. He doesn’t recall them responding directly to what he’s said before. He finds his hand’s got a grip on the newel post, the skin across his knuckles white. 

“I never left you,” he says. 

“Yes, you did!” Parker sounds upset. Urgent. He’s heard her that way before, but not often. “Come back, now!”

Eliot feels his throat constrict. Left them. It never occurred to him they’d think he’d left them. Do they want him to go back to Portland? They lived together in Boston longer than that. Unless…

“I want to, Parker,” he says, and has just enough left in him that he wishes he didn’t mean it. “I just… I just had things to do here.”

She doesn’t answer him this time, her voice lowering to a buzz at the back of his brain, but he summons up enough strength to speak to her again, anyway.

“Maybe soon. I’m almost done here. Maybe I’ll join you soon.”

The thought is enough to get him through the rest of the day. Perhaps the almost-promise works for them, too, because they don’t call to him at all until he’s back in bed and asleep.

***

“You’re quiet.”

Peggy hasn’t spoken either in almost twenty minutes. She’s just sat and stared out over the park like that’s why they’re out here, in the cold, wrapped up in coats and scarves and holding drinks that were hot when they sat down. Eliot hasn’t even tasted his.

“Didn’t know that was a crime,” he says, and almost apologizes. Almost. After all these years, she must be used to the way he gets.

“I’m worried about you,” she says, as though he didn’t just snap at her. “I’m allowed to be worried.”

“You got nothing to be worried about,” he says.

“You mean you don’t want me to be worrying,” she says. “Look, I’ve not got involved. No. I haven’t. You can look at me like that all you want. When you first came back here, when you brought Ben? I didn’t want to ask too many questions. And later, I figured if you…vanished, it would just be the kind of thing that happens to a spy.”

Eliot frowns, but he supposes he never really corrected what Peggy thought about the team. ‘Alice’ was a spy, so her friends must be, too. Even the one person besides him who still remembers them doesn’t really remember them.

“But after all this time, you think I can just sit by and say nothing when you’re being distant and…and…”

Peggy pauses. Eliot doesn’t try to say anything into the silence. She’s right, he supposes. He’s shut himself away almost entirely. When he opened his front door to come out and meet her, after too many messages to be able to ignore them all, a bunch of kids across the street bolted like they thought Eliot was a ghost.

“I’m worried you’re thinking of doing something…permanent,” Peggy says at last, and flicks a quick look at him. 

Eliot thinks he might never have seen her look so uncomfortable. So sad.

“Nothing’s permanent,” he says, because for a while there he thought he had bedrock under his feet and it turned out to be nothing but water. He’s been drowning in it ever since. If it finally steals the last of his air, so be it. “And it wouldn’t be on you, anyway.”

He realizes his mistake when she pales.

“If I see you falling and don’t do anything about it, then it’s on me,” she says, voice shaking. She tries to hide it, he can tell, but he damn near lived with Sophie Devereaux for years, and Peggy’s never been able to fool him. “And Ben-”

“Ben ain’t mine,” he says. 

“Technically, he’s not mine, either,” Peggy says.

They fall back to silence, Eliot not knowing how to say anything to heal the hurt he’s caused her. He can’t say what she wants, because he’d be lying. 

Eliot’s got no intention of staying apart from his team for much longer.

***

“You have to snap out of this,” Nate says. “Parker and Hardison are upset. Sophie’s close to tearing her hair out.”

Eliot spins, his hands still soapy from washing up, to find Nate standing in the middle of his kitchen. The guy looks the way he did back when he walked out of the Brewpub, Sophie holding his hand, and into a life of retirement. No. Not quite the same. He looks…rumpled. There’s worry on his face and his shirt looks like he’s slept in it. Strange for his ghost to turn up looking anything less than completely the Nate Ford Eliot thinks of when he looks back. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks. 

“I’ve come to bring you back,” Nate says. “They’ve all been asking you. You must have heard them. We’ve been told you should be able to hear us, Eliot. You might like it here, but you need to stop this, now.”

“I am,” Eliot says, because he has three plans lined up, each one in nearly the final stages of being weighed and measured. “I will. You just need to give me a bit more time. I promise you, Nate, I’ll be with you all soon.”

“You don’t have much longer, Eliot,” Nate says. 

He’s starting to fade out around the edges, and Eliot wants him gone, wants him to stay. His breath mists the air as he watches Nate thin out, fading into the background, his eyes fixed on Eliot in that way he has that means Eliot wants to follow his lead. Wants Eliot to follow him.

When Nate’s gone, Eliot leaves the dishes. He goes to the spare room at the back of the house and digs up the box from the bottom drawer of the cabinet, the one he hasn’t touched since he moved here. Inside, he finds the photos of the team. Sitting on the floor, his joints aching and his heart aching worse, Eliot lets himself look at them. 

“I’ll be with you soon,” he promises, tracing a finger along Hardison’s face. “I’ll be with all of you soon.”

***

The bud in his ear isn’t working. Of course it isn’t. He doesn’t know why he’s dug it out and put it in. He doesn’t remember doing it. 

Maybe it was around the same time he decided to wear this green cardigan. God, he hates this thing. He can’t think why he’d ever have chosen it. And the house seems far too cold.

He’s waiting for a message from someone. It’s important. He thinks it’s the one that’ll mean he can leave here, finally, and be with his team again. If he could just remember who and what and why. 

A knock at the door drags him to his feet, and he stumbles on his way to the door. A shape in the glass makes him frown. It looks like… No. His minds playing tricks. 

Pulling the door open, he finds Sophie. 

“Soph?” He presses back, his hands twitching, but he can’t quite bring himself to shut the door in her face, even if she is a ghost. “What…?”

“Eliot, you have to wake up,” she says, stepping right up the threshold but no further. “Haven’t you heard us?”

She reaches out a hand and nearly brushes against him, but he steps back again and she misses. The hurt on her face is something that cuts. 

“You just have to wait a little while longer,” he says. 

“If we wait a little longer, you’ll be dead,” she tells him.

He doesn’t understand. She says it like that’s a bad outcome, but it’s the whole point. So he stares at her and he nods.

“Yeah. And then I can be with you all.”

Her frown throws him. She doesn’t look pleased with his answer.

“Eliot,” she tells him. “We don’t want you dead. We want you back.” 

She has blossom in her hair, but that’s wrong. It’s winter. Unless he’s slipped again, and lost a whole nother season.

“Can I come in?” she asks. “I’m sorry. I know it seems ridiculous, but there are rules to this, apparently. You have to invite me in. It’s metaphorical.”

Eliot gestures her inside. It makes no sense to him. She’s been in his house the last decade and more. Still, if the ghost of Sophie Devereaux wants an invitation, she can have one. He turns and leads the way to the kitchen, because Sophie might be dead but she’s still Sophie, and it’s only polite to offer tea.

There’s a mug of hot lemon on the table, steam still rising. He hasn’t made any of that in…weeks. He thinks.

“You’re confused,” Sophie says. “Things aren’t making sense.” He feels the touch of her hand on his arm as she goes on. “And it’s okay, Eliot. I’m here to explain. I’m here to help you come home to us.”

“I don’t get it,” he says. He knows he sounds lost. Perk of getting old, he guesses. And of being haunted. “I already decided to die. Why are you here now? Shouting in my ear get boring?”

Sophie steps in front of him, her expression full of some emotion Eliot’s too tired to translate.

“Eliot,” she says. “You stopped responding to us. When we came to get you, you were out cold. Hardison tried calling to you through the window, but we haven’t been able to get you to move. You’ve been in this house for nearly three days. Much longer and you’ll die.”

“Unconscious?” he asks. “Wait, I’m… I don’t understand?”

“Eliot,” Sophie says. “you’re dying.”

He finds a smile stretches his lips.

“Then I’ll get to see you again soon,” he says.

Sophie shakes her head.

“No, Eliot. No. We’re not dead. And we don’t want you to die. This…this was supposed to be a simple con. We have no idea what happened.”

She smiles at him, her head tilting, but it’s the kind of smile he’s seen her give Nate a thousand times, when she’s watching him make some decision or take a drink or something else that she knows will hurt the man. It’s the smile she saves for when she’s watching someone she loves destroy themselves and wishes she could save them. That’s the thing about Sophie, though: she’s more than smart enough to know you can only hope people like Nathan Ford decide to save themselves. 

He aches. He aches and she’s telling him he has to do something, but he doesn’t get to die. He wishes that fog in his head would clear, but it’s boiling thick inside his skull and he can’t think straight. 

To give himself a moment, he takes a seat at the table and curls his hands around the mug. Still warm. But he’s sure he didn’t make it. There’s half a mug left.

“What do you know?” he asks, because intel is useful. Intel can keep you from making mistakes. And gathering intel can give you a few minutes of breathing space before you have to make a decision.

Sophie joins him, sinking into the chair opposite and setting one hand on the table between them, as though she’s reaching to pull him to her. He tightens his grip on the mug.

“You were playing the part of a recluse. Hardison set you up in a house and I kitted you out in clothes you declared were made in the dark by animals. You hated the house. All we heard for over an hour was you complaining about the place, about how it needed fixing up. You were out in the garden for a while, then you went digging in the attic. You said it was cold, colder than it had any right to be, and you were going to make some tea.” She glances down at his hands. “Hot lemon. And that was the last we heard of you.”

“I passed out?” he asks. If he’s out cold and this is some fever dream, that makes…a kind of sense. It’s a really detailed dream, if so. 

But Sophie’s shaking her head.

“We don’t know. Eliot, we’re still outside the house. We can’t get in. Hardison keeps hammering on the door and Parker’s tried to break in through every window and crack and she can’t do it. The house is keeping us out.”

“But you’re here,” he says.

Sophie looks away and grimaces.

“I don’t know where I am. We found someone who said they could help. They gave me this tea, said it would let me talk to you. Parker ate some of the leaves first, before we could stop her, and said she heard you. Then Nate insisted on taking a sip. But the woman who gave me the tea said it should be me who came in. So, here I am. She says if you don’t come back to us soon, the house will claim you forever. She says it isn’t the first time.”

“The house is, what, eating me?” Eliot asks. He knows he should sound disbeliving. Hell, he should feel disbelieving. He doesn’t seem to have it in him, though. He just feels numb. Empty. Cold. So very, very cold. He shivers.

“Eliot,” Sophie says, and stretches her hand closer. Only a few inches between them, now. “You have to choose to come with me. “She said it might be hard. This house? It gives you what you want.”

What he wants? He wants his team, his family, dead, and Nate and Sophie’s son raised by a friend of Parker’s who doesn’t even know Parker’s real name?

Except from what Sophie is saying, none of that is real. 

“This ain’t what I want,” he says, but he makes no move to take her hand.

“I don’t know what you’ve been living,” she says. “I just know this house clings to you, and I know if you don’t want to come with me, we’re all going to be mourning you really soon. And Eliot? I don’t want to mourn you.”

He can’t accept what she’s saying. He can’t…want this. Can he? 

Letting go of the mug, he takes her hand, and feels the place waver around him.

A tapping sound starts up.

***

The cardigan’s scratching at the skin of his wrists and his back’s pressed onto something cold. Eliot opens his eyes and finds himself staring up at a ceiling. It’s his kitchen. No. The kitchen of the house Hardison got for the con. 

Unless Sophie was a ghost and he’s just so old and used up he’s passed out on his kitchen floor. He doesn’t remember taking anything, but he’s bought enough pills over the last few months he could have done. He feels groggy enough to have taken something, too. 

Grimacing, he rolls onto his side and pushes himself up until he’s on his knees. And he shivers. 

“Uncle El?”

Twisting, Eliot finds Ben in the doorway, staring at him from a pale face. The kid looks worried, his eyes drawn in wide circles.

“Ben? What?”

Eliot Spencer isn’t the type to up and cry, but there’re tears pressing against his eyes. If Ben’s here, then Sophie wasn’t. It’s an either or type of scenario. Suddenly, he isn’t sure he has the energy to stand. Sophie was right there, right across from him. He held her hand, for fuck’s sake. He felt the warmth in her skin. 

Ben crosses the room to help him up, grabbing him under the arm with one hand and gripping his hand with the other. His skin’s cold. 

“Uncle El, are you all right? You…you haven’t done anything…stupid, have you?”

Stupid? Ben might be the kid of two of the smartest, craftiest people ever to cross Eliot’s path, but the kid’s always been naive to the point of it being almost worrying. And no way would Peggy tell her son that Eliot’s been thinking of taking that step. No way. 

“How’d you mean?” he asks, stalling. 

Ben’s skin really is cold. Eliot needs to check the heating in this place, or get someone in to do it. He lets Ben help him back to his chair and sits heavily. The rest of that tea would be good around now, even if it’s likely gone cold. It isn’t there. 

That tapping noise is back, though. Eliot remembers hearing it before, but he’s never been able to track down what it is. It’s annoying. He twists, angling his head to get a better sense of it. It seems like something he should be able to work out.

Ben’s hand rests on Eliot’s shoulder, dragging Eliot’s attention back, and his voice is all concern when he speaks.

“Mum’s worried about you,” he says. “Me, too. Do you think, maybe, you should talk to someone? I don’t want you to go, Uncle El.”

“Where would I be going?” Eliot asks, staring at the spot on the table where his drink was. His thoughts feel sluggish, weighed down. 

Ben’s hand withdraws and the kid crosses the room, this time heading the other way. Eliot hears the water running, then the clatter of metal on metal. 

“Some tea will help,” Ben says. 

“Honey and lemon,” Eliot says.

He hears the hesitation before Ben speaks.

“You said you’d gone off that. Don’t you remember? I’ll make you something else.”

Eliot frowns again and stares at the space where his tea was so hard he thinks Hardison would’ve told him to stop scaring the wood. If he’s gone off honey and lemon, that’s yet another thing he doesn’t remember, and- For an instant, he sees a mug, half-filled. It fades away again as he watches. 

That…is new. 

“When did I say I’d gone off it?” he asks, and inches his hand across the table. The mug drifts back again, fading in enough that Eliot can see its outline. 

“A while back,” Ben says. “Said it reminded you of things you’d rather forget. I wish you’d just forget them. You’d be happier.”

“Happier?” Eliot asks. “Forget who?”

He hasn’t talked much with Ben about the past. He’s never mentioned Nate or Sophie, for fear Ben might get suspicious. 

“Whoever it is you want to be with instead of me,” Ben says. “You’ve got a place here. I want you to stay.”

Eliot’s fingers brush against warm ceramic and he feels a flush of warmth that has nothing to do with honey or lemon.

“What have I got here that I’d want more than I want them?” Eliot asks, the words slipping out the way words do when he’s drugged and hasn’t had the antidote. “A cold house and voices in my head. What kind of place is that?”

“You aren’t meant to hear their voices!” Ben says, and he’s next to Eliot, grabbing his hand and pulling it away from the mug. He’s freezing to the touch. “You aren’t meant to want anything but to stay here and be my uncle! This is what you wanted: quiet, peace, someone to watch over who’d not go getting into danger.”

And Eliot’s mind clears. The kid in front of him might look a little like Nate, with the same curl to his hair, and a little like Sophie, with that beauty and those eyes, but he’s not their kid. The pale skin isn’t new. Now Eliot thinks about it, Ben’s always been pale and cold, and he’s always turned up at the oddest times. 

“You think I’d want them dead?” he asks. He tries to pull his hand away, but he can’t break Ben’s grip. “You think I’d ever want them dead? To be the last one left alive? This isn’t what I want!”

“It’s what you’ve got,” Ben says. “And you can keep it. You’ve watched over me, kept me safe. Don’t you remember? And I’m not going to fling myself off a building or piss off someone who might kill me. You can keep me safe always. Isn’t that what you want? Someone to keep safe always?”

Eliot feels the tension running through his whole body, but the aches are mostly gone. It’s just what he was used to, back when he was with his team, back when he fought almost every day to keep his team safe. Back when he wasn’t alone. He leans in until Ben’s close enough all Eliot can really see are the kid’s eyes. 

“I want my team,” he says. “I want my family.”

And he lunges. 

***

The tapping noise grows until it’s almost deafening. Eliot’s cold. Those are about the only two truths he can hang on to. There’s a tapping noise and he’s cold.

No. There’s one other truth. He’s going to fight his way out of this. He’s going to get back to his team. If it turns out Ben’s real and his team’s dead, then Eliot’s joining them. If they’re alive? Yeah. He’s going to fight his way out of this.

He doesn’t know how he does it, grappling with something he can’t see, but he gets a hold and pulls, and the tapping noise cuts off.

***

Eliot carries the mug with him, the last warmth from it soothing. When he opens the door, weak winter sun hits his face and he blinks. It’s brighter than it should be, like he’s been in the dark for a long time. 

His vision clears and he sees them. Sophie stands with her hands to her mouth, her eyes huge and hopeful. Nate stands beside her, looking like he wants about ten shots of something. Hardison has tears in his eyes, and Parker launches herself at Eliot so fast he only just gets the mug out of the way. 

The weight of her is almost too much. She’s warm. 

“Hey, Parker,” he says, and lets himself lean his head into her, lets himself press his face against her hair. 

“Eliot,” she says. “I thought the ghost had eaten you.”

She lets him carry her down the steps and to the others, who haven’t made it any closer than halfway to the front door from the gate. He sets Parker down when they’re a foot or so away and she slips an arm through his, holding on. It’s not normal Parker behavior, but Eliot’s learned to go with it when she wants contact. 

For a moment, that’s a distant memory, painful to drag up. He blinks back the tears and breathes through the lump in his throat. 

“Hey,” he says, and can’t get any more out. 

Hardison has him wrapped in a hug before he can process it, Parker still in there with them, and he sees Nate take Sophie’s hand as they watch. When Hardison finally lets go, Sophie hugs him, and Nate takes a turn. None of them mention the tears he knows he hasn’t managed to choke back, or the way he’s still shivering. 

“He’s mostly back,” a voice he doesn’t recognize says. “You’ll need to stay with him until the ghost is dealt with.”

He turns his head to see a woman standing just outside the gate. She’s short, her eyes bright and dark. A red woolen hat and an equally garish scarf almost swallow her and she has her hands stuffed into the pockets of a coat that’s deep gold. 

“You are?” he asks, tensing. 

She shrugs.

“Someone who knows about these things. Let’s say you have your skill set, and I have mine, Eliot Spencer.” 

She says his name like she knows him and Eliot finds himself scanning back through his long life of memories, trying to place her. There were a few…odd missions, back in his military days, things he’s tried to put out of his mind. 

“And how do we take care of the ghost?” he asks.

“You don’t,” she says. “I have other people coming to do that. You’re job is to let your family care for you, to ground you in the present. You’ve been in there for a lot longer than anyone else has managed without being lost completely. You’ll be at risk of coming untethered for some time.”

“So, we should stick with him round the clock?” Hardison asks. He sounds almost eager.

The woman nods. 

“Yes. If possible. You have the tea I gave you, Sophie. Have him drink it every two hours. Once the ghost is gone, it’ll get easier, but take no risks. He could still be lost again.”

Eliot’s having enough trouble getting things right in his mind as it is, and some woman ordering his team to look after him like he’s an invalid isn’t helping. He opens his mouth to protest, but she turns her head and he realizes she’s listening to the approach of a car, the rumble of its engine loud in the street. 

“That’s them,” she says. “You should go. Let them take care of this.” She waits until they’re moving, until Sophie is out of the gate, and presses her hand to Sophie’s arm. “He needs to know his place,” she says, and it’s said with finality.

Sophie nods, and Eliot finds himself drawn away. He makes himself keep his eyes turned away from that house and from the emptiness inside it.

***

They make him take a warm bath, which would be fine, except Parker refuses to let him take it alone. 

“I’m not gonna drown myself, Parker!” he says, and feels a twinge at how close he came a few times over the last few years. Seeming years. None of that was real. “Let me have some privacy.”

“It’s Hardison or me,” Parker tells him, and he lets her stay.

Once he’s done, Parker hands him a bathrobe he doesn’t remember having, and it’s soft and expensive and very obviously something Sophie’s been out and bought for him. He sighs and shrugs it on. 

“This gonna go on for a while?” he asks, when he leaves Parker and Hardison’s bathroom to find the whole team sitting in the living-room. Except for Parker, who’s hovering near his elbow as though she’s worried he’ll forget how to walk. “I had a weird day, but I’m fine now. Must have been some…some gas leak or something. Or I ate something. Not like it’s the first time my head’s been messed with.”

“The only one of us who didn’t try that tea is Hardison,” Sophie says, “and that’s because he was still on research duty. Eliot, we know it was something…beyond the mundane. You don’t have to lie to us, and you don’t have to lie to yourself. You were almost taken from us by a ghost, or by some sort of spirit, anyway. Now we need to do what we’ve been told to make sure you don’t still get lost. So, sit down and let us take care of you. You take care of us often enough.”

It feels like a jab, and he flinches. He sees the worry on their faces, but he can’t help it. To him, it feels like he’s spent years eaten up by grief and guilt, all too aware he didn’t save them when he should have. Even if the details are hazy, fading or never clear to begin with, he remembers the desperation as he lost them one by one. He remembers bits of their funerals. Hell, he remembers Sophie begging him to take care of her kid.

Hot anger flares up. That…that thing had made him care about it, had made him think it was family. 

“Come sit down, man,” Hardison says, and beckons him over. “There’s plenty of space for you here, all right? I kinda want you where I can see you for a bit.”

Eliot’s still shaken enough that he sits where he’s told, right next to Hardison, and Parker slips into the space to his other side. 

“Did you leave?” he asks, knowing it’s coming over as blunt but needing the answer. “Did you and Nate go off and retire?”

Sophie stares at him, a slight frown on her brow.

“Yes,” she says, slowly, and he can see her adjusting her approach in the face of his uncertainty. “Two years ago. But the three of you have kept Leverage going, and we come back for some jobs.” She smiles, and it’s fond and warm and so very Sophie it hurts. “We lasted all of six months before we admitted full retirement wasn’t for us.”

He nods. So, some of what he thought was true, then. They were down to three, full time. Parker and Hardison, and Eliot to guard them. And he…he hadn’t failed at that. They’re all still here. He can feel them right up against him, almost to the point he should feel trapped. He doesn’t.

“Were you working on this job?” he asks, because he still can’t quite remember what took him into that house. He can’t quite split apart the tendrils of the life he thinks he was leading and dispel them.

“Yes,” Nate says. “Yes, we were. And we’re staying until we know you’re okay. At least.”

He nods, but his hands feel jittery. He finds he wants to reach out and hold onto them, to check they’re really there. He clasps his hands together in his lap and makes himself be still.

“And, er, when were we last in Boston?” he asks. “When did we last see Peggy?”

“Peggy?” Sophie asks, and shares a look with Nate.

“You mean Alice’s friend?” Parker asks. “I saw her last month when I was in LA. She was back there, too. We met up. But you didn’t come. You went over to New York with Alec and got in a fight with some ex-spy. It sounded exciting. Alice and Peggy just went for sushi.”

She leans in as she speaks, until she’s a solid weight all down his left side, and she wraps her hand around his upper arm. On his other side, Hardison shifts and Eliot feels his friend’s arm stretch out behind him, not quite touching.

“Yeah,” Hardison says. “That was some trip. I never need to do that again.”

Eliot leans back, letting his hair brush Hardison’s arm, and feels the other man go still. He knows he’s taking liberties. Unless he’s forgotten a lot, he never quite crossed that last boundary with Hardison or with Parker, much as he ached to. He always kept the kind of distance that meant he wasn’t putting their relationship at risk. Right now, though, he wishes he could ask them to get closer, even if Sophie and Nate are right there.

“Eliot,” Sophie asks, “exactly what did you experience? Where did you think you were?”

“You saw, Soph,” he says, the memory of her in that kitchen still solid.

“Yes, I saw a kitchen, but where did you think the kitchen was? How long had you been there?”

He drops his gaze and closes his eyes. 

“A while. Look, how long did that woman say this whole grounding thing would take?”

They stop asking him questions, but they make him drink a mug of tea that tastes like it’s been brewed from earth and rust. He isn’t sure how else to describe it, even with his palate and vast range of experiences. It makes him feel heavy and he has to breathe through a moment of panic.

“You okay, El?” Nate asks, and Eliot sees Ben’s face, hears his voice.

He looks at Nate, who’s sitting next to him now in the rotation of which person is closest, and grabs at his arm, catching a handful of sleeve.

“Eliot,” he says, his own name almost a snarl. “It’s Eliot.”

Nate’s eyes widen and he coughs. He goes very still.

“Okay. Eliot. Are you okay, Eliot?”

And his voice has gone low and calm, the way he is sometimes with a mark who’s a bit too close to the edge. All these years, Nate’s mostly left Eliot alone when it comes to his PTSD, has mostly seemed to trust that it won’t get in the way of what needs doing. Maybe he’s trusted Eliot to tend to himself, and maybe he’s just thought Eliot won’t let it interfere with a mission, but either way they’ve only skirted close to Nate calling him out on it a few times. 

That thought seems strong. It’s something Eliot’s sure of, for all of one fleeting second, before the sensation dissolves into mist.

“I…” Eliot tries to form a sentence, but he isn’t sure. He doesn’t know if he’s all right. 

Should he be doing something? He’s sure he should be doing something. Maybe Peggy needs him, or Ben… There’s something about Ben.

“Sophie!” Nate calls, and that can’t be right. Nate’s dead. Nate’s been dead for years. Ben and Nate can’t both be calling on Eliot, because they never existed as adults at the same time. “Sophie! I think he’s fading out. What do I do?”

It’s odd, to see Nate scared, because he is scared. Eliot wonders what a ghost has to be scared about. The worst has to be over, once you’re dead. Unless death does mean judgment, does mean punishment. But Nate Ford has only broken the law to gain justice, and mostly not even for himself. If either of them will end up in Hell, it will be Eliot. It will be cruel indeed, if he takes that step and finds he’s still not with his team. None of them can be in Hell. 

“Did I do it?” Eliot asks, because he can’t remember. 

Nate leans in, slowly, as though he thinks Eliot might bolt or attack, and that’s not right, either, but he can’t bring himself to say anything about it. He needs to know if he did it.

“Do what?” Nate asks. “What are you asking me?”

“Did I die?” Eliot asks. He hears movement to the side, but for once he can’t resolve it into anything definite. “Did I kill myself?”

A gasp, and Sophie’s next to Nate, crouching down and looking at him with such sadness he isn’t sure what to do.

“Eliot, no,” she says. “No, you’re still very much alive and you need to stay this way. Do you hear me? No dying. You’re not allowed. You promised to keep them safe. You can’t do that from beyond the grave.”

“Can if they’re dead, too,” he says.

“Is that what he was seeing?” Nate asks. “He dreamed Parker and Hardison were dead?”

Eliot feels confusion fill him.

“You all died,” he says. “Parker first. Then Hardison a few hours later. I almost got to you in time, but they killed you clean right in front of me. And Sophie…” He looks at Sophie and wonders how she can be near him, when he failed her so badly. “Sophie hid Ben, but they got her. I was in time to be there, when she… I nearly made it.”

They both look troubled. 

“Who’s Ben?” Nate asks.

And Eliot can’t say it. He can’t tell Nathan Ford that another son was lost to him, this time because his father didn’t make it. He can’t. 

“You all died,” he repeated, because he doesn’t think they must get it. They don’t look dead. The dead are supposed to look dead. “You all died and left me alone.”

Sophie and Nate exchange another look, and somewhere nearby Eliot hears weeping. He doesn’t know who it is. Nothing is distinct enough. He almost feels as though what’s in front of him isn’t there, as though he’s somewhere else entirely, watching it from a distance.

“Hey!” Sophie says, her voice hardening, growing rougher. Her hand lands on his knee and it’s only a fraction away from a slap. “Do we look dead to you? We’re not dead, Eliot. You didn’t fail us. How many times do I have to tell you? But you’re going to fail us, if you keep fading out. You promised! So do your damn duty and be here.”

A weight lands on Eliot’s back, golden hair spilling over one of his shoulders as Parker presses her face against his cheek and murmurs. He can’t make out her words, but he feels the hum of them in his jawbone. A ghost shouldn’t have weight. Shouldn’t have Sophie’s sharp gaze, either. 

“Not dead?” he asks. He shivers, wanting to pull his cardigan around himself. “I didn’t… Where are we?”

A hand, Parker’s, cups his jaw from behind and turns his head, and he lets her move him.

“We’re home,” she says in his ear. Her voice is louder and softer than it has been all these years. “We’re home, Eliot. Right where you should be.”

He catches sight of Hardison, standing with a look on his face that Eliot longs to wipe away and tears all too visible, and Parker’s right. He’s in their loft. 

“I’m in your home,” he says. 

“Yours,” Parker says, and he sees Hardison nod, decisively. “You should live here, too. You belong here. And you’re not leaving here until we know you’re back with us properly. Sophie, does he need more tea?”

“He shouldn’t,” Sophie says. “But he was in there was a long time. Longer than most people. Maybe he does need more.”

Eliot doesn’t care. His ghosts never argued about tea or told him to move in with them. They aren’t ghosts. Ben isn’t real, he remembers. Ben isn’t, wasn’t, Nate and Sophie’s kid, and Eliot didn’t fail them. 

This time, when the tears come, he lets them fall, and Parker wraps herself tight around him and doesn’t let go.

***

He nearly rebels when it becomes clear where they expect him to sleep.

“No,” he says, backing away.

“You get into that bed and you stay there,” Hardison says. “You think I’m risking waking up in the morning and finding you’ve gone all ‘Spotless Mind’ on us? Or worse?”

Eliot watched them pack away anything they thought he could use to harm himself earlier on, when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. Well, they thought he was asleep on the settee, his head in Parker’s lap, but he let them go on thinking it. If he does slip and decide he needs to die to be with them, it’s not like he’s lacking in creativity. He feels like he’s past that, though.

“Damn it, Hardison,” he says, and feels ridiculous saying it while he’s wearing the soft sleep pants and pastel top Sophie’s bought for him. It’s silk. He’s not sure how that’s meant to seem grounded to anyone. “I don’t need to sleep in your bed. You got any idea how…how weird that is?”

“I don’t see why,” Parker says. She sounds like she means that. 

Somehow, Eliot finds himself taking one more mug of that vile tea and climbing into the bed. Nate and Sophie take the spare room. 

Once it’s dark, and he has Hardison on one side and Parker on the other, Eliot sighs.

“What is it, man?” Hardison asks. “You with us?”

“Yes, Hardison,” Eliot growls. 

“Hey, no need to snap my head off,” Hardison says. “Not like it’s a stupid question. Never thought I’d really come up against a real live ghost.”

Eliot doesn’t point out the issue in that sentence. Issues. Not like Hardison came up against it. Against Ben. Eliot sighs again.

“Just tell us what’s wrong,” Parker says. “We have a rule. We have to say what we’re feeling. It’s a lot less confusing that way. And if you can’t work it out, we help you. Okay?”

It’s an insight into their relationship that Eliot didn’t need. Or else he wants more of it. He isn’t sure. Before he can decide, he feels fingers dig into his side, between two ribs. 

“Ow! All right. All right. I’m…I’m just not…” He takes a breath and starts again. He’s the best balanced of them. He can do this. “I feel weird, all right? Grown people ain’t supposed to sleep in their friends’ bed. Especially not when there are two friends and they’re together.”

At the same time, he can’t stand the thought of leaving them, of trying to sleep somewhere with empty space all around him. 

“Would it be better if one of us left?” Parker asks. “I can go and sleep somewhere else. I have a nest. Don’t ask where.”

“No! No, Parker, that would not be better.”

The irritation flaring through him is comforting. Familiar. He almost smiles, but he doesn’t trust it not to show in his voice, and it really is odd being here, between them. A lot of the oddness is how right it feels.

“You know, you think too much,” Hardison says, and pushes on before Eliot can snort and reply. “When we heard you were stuck in there, I wanted you back so badly I just rolled right with all the crazy being suggested. And now? Man. You really spent subjective years thinking we were gone? And you ain’t wanting to cling on now you know we’re still here? Because Parker’s right - we have our rule. And I’m feeling I wanna wrap myself around you and not let go. All right? And if the closest I can get is you lying here next to me, then that’s what I’ll take. So quit moaning. Unless you wanna try a different kind of moaning, but, you know. Your choice.”

Eliot’s brain is still sluggish after everything, even though he’s feeling present and has been for a few hours. 

“What?” he asks. 

“I think Hardison’s suggesting you have sex,” Parker says. 

“And you’d be okay with that?” Eliot asks, instead of shouting at them both for being over the line. “With me and Hardison…doing that?”

“Sure.” He feels the bed move and can just make out enough of an outline to see her shrug. “Why not? I don’t feel like it right now, but I could watch. Or I could go get a snack. I’m hungry. Did you cook for the ghost? Is that why he wanted you to stay so bad? Or did you have sex with the ghost? All the people you’ve been with seem happy after.”

Eliot does not want to know if Parker has been watching him or has just listened in to conversations later. Also…

“I didn’t have sex with the ghost, Parker!”

He doesn't tell them who the ghost was pretending to be. If it was a ghost. Creature of some sort. It’s still hard to shake the feelings he had about Ben all those… Well, not years, but they felt like years.

“But you want to have sex with Hardison?” she asks. “If you do, it doesn’t have to be now. Does it, Alec? We waited until we both wanted to. Wanting to makes it a lot better.”

Eliot doesn’t want to know what else is behind that statement. He notices he still hasn’t rejected the idea outright. 

“I…” He thought they were dead, and now they aren’t, and he’s in bed with them, and they both just said he could have this. And he doesn’t ache or feel cold or feel empty. He gives in. “I want to,” he says. “Just…yeah. Not now.”

“Okay, then,” Hardison says, and he sounds ten times happier. “You okay with me holding your hand, though? Or snuggling? Let me know, man.”

“I could go for you both being closer,” Eliot says, because this is the kind of night to be honest in, it seems, and because the memories are wavering, but he might never forget the grief and the loneliness. If they can press that out of him, then good.

He’s barely finished speaking before Hardison engulfs him and Parker winds herself into the spaces that are left. It’s warm. Most of the time, it would be too warm, but just now it stops that shivering at last, and Eliot doesn’t hear them calling to him as he drifts off to sleep, because they’re right there with him.


End file.
